Dead People

by Ewart Hutton

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘You’re disturbing our concentration.’

  ‘Emrys, Emrys . . .’ I declaimed expansively. ‘You should know better by now. I’m just going to hang around and pester you until you break.’

  He gave up. ‘Okay, whatever it takes to get rid of you,’ he said crossly.

  ‘Rose Jones, Owen’s sister, Greg Thomas’s fiancée.’

  ‘She’s dead and buried, Capaldi. Leave the poor girl in peace.’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘I told you before, we’re going back about fifteen years there.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘It was a tragic accident.’

  ‘Most of them are. Can you be more specific?’

  ‘She went to visit Greg, while he was still in the army. Where he was stationed. There was some kind of an incident. I can’t remember the details. I told you, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘Just give me the broad-brush outline.’

  ‘She was accidentally shot.’

  An internal alarm went off. ‘Did he take her onto a firing range?’

  ‘No, I told you, it was where he was stationed,’ he repeated impatiently, ‘Northern Ireland. During the Troubles. It was a bullet ricochet or something like that. A chance happening, wrong place, wrong time. She was a real sweet girl, and they made a wonderful couple. Greg was devastated. So was Owen, but he was the rock who helped him and the rest of the family pull through.’

  I turned away from him. I needed to be totally still for a moment.

  I turned back. ‘Where did Greg go? After he left the army? Before he and the Hornes opened the activity centre?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. He came back on occasions, to check up on Fron Heulog. He and Rose were going to live there. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist after that. You know, unapproachable.’

  How did this change things? I asked myself as I drove back to Unit 13. It gave me Greg Thomas as a suspect and revenge as a motive. But revenge on whom?

  Who had paid the bride price?

  *

  Justin had insisted on coming to Evie’s funeral. I didn’t try too hard to dissuade him. Funerals are strange and emotional things, and close observance can sometimes pick up useful underlying ripples of disturbance. I wanted to gauge reactions there when people saw Justin.

  But I also wanted him returned to safety. So I had arranged for Mackay to bring him to Unit 13.

  When they arrived I pulled Mackay to the side. ‘Thanks for bringing him.’

  ‘That’s okay. He’s a nice kid. Boyce and I are enjoying his company.’

  ‘Greg Thomas.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘His fiancée Rose was shot in Northern Ireland. There was some sort of incident and she got caught in the crossfire. I need to know what happened, Mac, I need the details.’ He turned away from me. When he turned back I saw it in his eyes. ‘You already knew?’

  He shook his head, but it wasn’t a denial. ‘Only the bare bones, there’s no real substance to it yet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ His reticence was scaring me.

  ‘I’ve been warned off.’

  ‘Officially?’

  ‘No, informally. It turns out that I know some guys who were involved, and they’re advising me to back off.’

  ‘Is that it? Is that as far as we can go?’

  He smiled. ‘No. I’m just warning you, I’m going to have to make some promises. There’s going to have to be total deniability.’

  ‘Whatever you have to do.’

  I got Justin into the car. I tried to suppress what Mackay had just told me. There was no point in speculating until I had more details.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked Justin as we drove to St Peter’s in Dinas. We were early. I wanted to be there to see everyone arrive.

  ‘A bit creeped out,’ he admitted, ‘I don’t know what to do at something like this.’

  ‘Just keep looking glum,’ I advised.

  ‘Evie and I used to talk about having a green burial. They do them in the woods now in some places. Plant a tree over you. She wanted a cardboard coffin.’

  Typical, I thought, she wouldn’t tell him about her boyfriend, the guy who had probably killed her, but she’d chatter on about how she wanted to be packaged after she’s dead. Because they were too young to believe that it could ever happen to them.

  ‘Do you think I should tell them?’

  ‘Pardon?’ I’d missed the gist of what he’d just said.

  ‘Her parents. Do you think I should tell them what her wishes were?’

  I turned to park in front of the church. The empty hearse was stationed outside. I pictured the coffin in the nave, the flowers, the printed order of service, the rented vicar. I turned to him with as gentle a smile as I could manage. ‘I wouldn’t. I think the ball’s rolled on a bit too far now.’

  The Salmons turned up separately, each with their own contingent. They both looked gaunt and broken, and their formal outfits made them look like they had been dressed in donated clothes by institutions that had only just released them. Mr Salmon made a move towards his wife, but she turned her back on him and rested her head on a friend’s shoulder. While her fate remained unknown, the absent Evie had been the tenuous glue of their marriage; now that they knew she was never coming home, the entire DNA of the thing had collapsed irretrievably.

  Kevin Fletcher arrived, immaculate in a black overcoat and holding leather gloves that looked like de-boned puppies. He would have made a good undertaker. If he hadn’t been secure in his conviction that we already had our guy, I would have suspected him of being there for the same reasons as me. So this must have been pure PR. He had brought a couple of uniforms along with him to dance attendance and identify him as the head honcho.

  He called me over. I told Justin to stay in full view of everyone and not to talk to strangers.

  ‘Who’s the strange-looking kid?’ Fletcher asked.

  ‘That’s Justin Revel, Evie’s friend.’

  He scowled. ‘I thought we told you to take him home?’

  ‘No,’ I corrected him with a smile, ‘DCS Galbraith told me to take him where he wanted to go. Justin told me he wanted to attend his friend’s funeral.’

  He scrutinized me warily. ‘I hope you’re not trying to work something here?’

  ‘Like what, boss?’

  He nodded towards the Salmons. ‘This is all about the fucking family, Capaldi,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth, while flashing one of his trademark brown-nosing smiles at a smart-looking elderly woman. ‘I don’t want you hijacking the occasion for your own private agenda. It makes us look like we haven’t got any feelings.’

  ‘No one could accuse you of that, boss.’

  I slipped back to Justin before he could work out whether I was being disrespectful.

  A lot of townspeople came to pay their respects. A few farmers I recognized, including the Joneses from Cogfryn. Jeff and Tessa turned up with Tessa’s helpers, all dressed up as best they could, given that they were living in the equivalent of a shanty town. Tessa managed to signal a small private greeting. Gloria and Isabel arrived, but no Clive. Gloria’s private greeting wasn’t so private. And no one from Fron Heulog.

  ‘Recognize many people here?’ I asked Justin. I was disappointed. I was only getting the usual reactions of open curiosity and mild reproach I would have expected from a rural community to a slightly weird urban youth in their midst. No expressions laden with obvious guilt or anguish.

  He shrugged. ‘A few faces I remember. No one stands out.’

  ‘No one that Evie ever pointed out to you?’

  He shook his head.

  I grabbed his arm. ‘What about them?’ I had just caught sight of Gerald Evans and his wife crossing the square towards the lych gate.

  ‘I saw her a couple of times when I biked over to see Evie. And he’s the one I told you about, the dude who offered her the hostess gig.’

&n
bsp; They had to walk past us to get inside the church. Evans started to stare me out. It was pure macho bullshit, I had expected it. I raised a finger and moved it in slow-motion to close one nostril, and then gave a loud and exaggerated sniff. His face went quizzical, he hadn’t understood my gesticulations. But his wife had noticed. I saw him incline his head to listen to her. He shook his head. He half turned and shot me a filthy look.

  He still hadn’t connected.

  I air-snorted a line of coke again.

  All I can think is that this was the moment when his wife told him who Justin was. Because when he turned round again his face had blanched.

  The connection had hit home hard.

  He knew that I was staring at the back of his head throughout the service. It was probably one of the rare occasions that he wished that he wasn’t such a big bastard. I was making him anxious. But he didn’t dare turn round. It was all there in the nervous gestures, scratching his ears, the finger down the back of the collar or researching the incipient bald spot.

  I got Justin out of the church fast. Most of the crowd would be dispersing, only the hard core of relatives taking the long drive to the crematorium. I wanted to get away before Evans emerged. I wanted to keep him squirming.

  Because I now realized that that was the only punishment that I was going to be able to inflict on him. Because I had just had my confirmation that it couldn’t have been him.

  He hadn’t recognized Justin.

  Which meant that he couldn’t have been the one who had been trying to eliminate him. Because he would have to have known what the guy he wanted vaporised looked like.

  I took the call on hands-free on the way back to Unit 13 to deliver Justin to Mackay. I had been expecting it.

  ‘Sergeant Capaldi, it’s Gerald Evans.’

  ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘From Emrys Hughes.’

  ‘Have you been complaining again?’

  ‘No,’ he protested contritely. It was almost as if I had accused him of being a very naughty boy. ‘I think we need to talk.’

  ‘Which you’d rather not do in front of your wife?’ I suggested.

  In front of anything remotely sentient, as it turned out. He asked me to meet him at a defunct out-of-town Baptist chapel. I was deliberately ten minutes late. His Land Rover Discovery was parked on the grass verge. He was waiting for me in the small walled graveyard that was bisected by the path to the chapel’s front door. He looked like he had been pacing.

  That restless energy was still in evidence. He was not used to dealing with anxiety. It was fucking up his normal power-and-anger response to situations. I would have to be careful with this guy. Constraint and containment were not among his more-developed social skills.

  But I was determined to get in at least one figurative punch to the nose before I had to dance off. ‘Grass Vegas.’

  He tried out a coy smile. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You fucked up, Gerald.’

  He flared, savoured the anger for a moment, before having to deflate. ‘It wasn’t just me,’ he whined.

  ‘You led me down the garden path with Evie.’

  ‘What did she tell that weird kid?’

  I winged it. ‘All about the drugs and the illegal gambling.’

  ‘The gambling wasn’t illegal,’ he protested righteously. ‘It was a private house.’

  ‘What about the coke?’

  He smiled warily. ‘You can’t prove anything.’

  I smiled back. ‘I don’t have to. I just have to turn up at your house to question you about it in front of your wife. Then I leave you to do the explaining.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘You should have used bald dwarves.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘If you were aiming for elegant decadence. You should have had dwarves walking around with the lines of coke on the top of their heads. A young woman in a padded-out bustier and fishnet tights is really passé.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Who was involved?’

  It was him and three golf-club and shooting cronies, he told me. I took down the names. The venue was the safe male sanctum of a basement play-room in the house of a recently divorced founder member.

  ‘Why did you hire Evie Salmon?’

  ‘Just to brighten the place up. You know, give it a touch of sparkle.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  He pulled a face. ‘She stopped coming. She just gave up.’

  ‘Did she give you a reason?’

  ‘She said that she’d met someone who wasn’t happy about what she was doing.’

  ‘Did she say who it was?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Could it have been one of the members?’

  ‘Not one of the regulars. We would all have known.’

  ‘When did she stop?’

  He thought about it. ‘Roughly six months before she went away.’

  But according to her father she had never given up her Saturday work. So, if he was telling the truth, whoever she had met had being paying her to keep up the pretence. Once again I had come up against that wall. What was it about this relationship that it had to be kept so secret? She hadn’t even been able to tell her best friend. Hell, I reminded myself, Justin was her only friend.

  The significance of something else he had just mentioned clicked into place. ‘You said “regulars”. Were there more than the four of you?’

  ‘Occasionally we’d invite selected guests along.’

  It didn’t take much imagination to envisage the hypocritical self-important pricks that made up their social circle. I had a sudden spark on someone who fitted that definition.

  ‘Was Clive Fenwick one?’

  ‘And his brother, Derek.’

  ‘I want a list of the names. All the ones you invited while Evie was working there.’

  ‘This is going to come out like an anonymous tip-off, isn’t it? You’re not going to drop me in it?’ The bastard was grinning at me. He thought we had fucking bonded.

  I made a noncommittal grunt and pretended to be deep in thought. I was no further down the road with the identity of Evie’s lover, but I was a happier man. I now had the means of putting Clive Fenwick’s balls into the vice.

  15

  I let Evans drive away and leave me at the chapel.

  I needed to force myself to reflect, and communing with a load of dead Baptists seemed as good a way as any of chopping my seething thought processes into more manageable bits.

  It also kept me in check. I had had one bruising encounter with Clive Fenwick, and I needed to make sure that I was in the driving seat next time we met. Which meant not going in half cocked and riding on pure emotion, because he was the sort of tricky bastard to come out of left field and unseat me.

  But first of all I needed to let Kevin Fletcher know about Grass Vegas. He would be dismissive – it was located in Dinas, therefore it didn’t connect with his agenda, but if I didn’t raise it I could be in real trouble if it came back to haunt us later.

  As well as the four founding members, Evans had given me the names of the guests who had been invited while Evie was still in attendance. These included the Fenwick brothers, a couple of big land agents, three auctioneers, a solicitor from Shrewsbury, an accountant from Chester, and a big-time local chicken farmer. There were some pretty powerful people in there, and I needed clearance to go after them.

  He heard me out. ‘He definitely didn’t say anything about Bruno Gilbert being a member of this club?’ he asked.

  ‘Definitely, boss.’ I didn’t like to tell him that the only invitation Evans and his ilk would have extended to Bruno was as a stand-in for a rugby ball.

  ‘It is historical.’ He was musing. ‘And there’s no way we could tie them in to dope without a live raid, and that is not going to be any kind of priority given the budget situation, and the type of citizen involved.’

  ‘What do you want
me to do, boss? We have established a relationship between Evie and these men.’

  ‘Historical, though, as I said. And their geography’s all wrong. But I suppose we could tackle them, see if there’s any way we can connect Gilbert to Evie through them. They may have said something about her in front of him that set his juices running.’

  He seemed to have an idea of Bruno as some kind of social gadfly, flitting around garden parties overhearing conversations. I didn’t contradict him. I didn’t want him to rescind my license to go forth and harry Clive Fenwick.

  It may sound hokey, but there is a phantom within certain ringtones that lets you know that bad news is arriving, even before you’ve answered it. This was one of them. My first thought was Justin.

  ‘Sergeant Capaldi, something terrible has happened. You’ve got to get over here immediately.’ Her voice was anguished, bordering on hysteria, and I only just made out that it was Valerie Horne.

  ‘Can you slow down, please, Mrs Horne?’ But she was gone.

  With no explanation I just had my imagination to work with as I drove fast to Fron Heulog.

  Was it some sort of admission from Greg Thomas? Could he finally have realized that he was running out of twists and turns and hung himself from the new climbing frame?

  I drove reluctantly past the entrance to the Barn Gallery. But Clive Fenwick’s reprieve was only going to be short-lived, I hoped.

  The security gate was open at the activity centre so I drove straight in. There was an air of desertion about the place as I went up the entrance drive. No clusters of sulky kids suffering cold turkey due to shop-window and diesel-particulate deprivation.

  Was that it? The cause of her panic? Had Emrys Hughes’s ultimate nightmare come to pass? Had there been a mass breakout? Were Dinas and the surrounding countryside about to be ravaged by packs of wild gangsta youths trawling for fun and mayhem?

  The place wasn’t quite deserted. A young Asian boy, about thirteen years old, was standing outside the office. He looked like he had fallen into an alien space and was waiting apprehensively for something to bite him.

  ‘You the policeman?’ he asked as I got out of the car.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She told me to bring you.’ He was already walking away.